Biodiversity State Indicator: Integrating taxonomy, functionality and species interactions

Abstract

The biodiversity crisis is a pressing global issue, mainly driven by climate change and anthropogenic pressures. Efforts to mitigate climate change have had limited success, emphasizing the need to address local stressors to prevent biodiversity collapse. However, measuring biodiversity remains complex due to its multifaceted nature, including taxonomic, functional, and interaction dimensions. This study introduces the Biodiversity State Indicator (BSI), an integrated metric designed to assess biodiversity by combining classic taxonomic biodiversity with functional biodiversity and community interactions. The BSI calculates the state of biodiversity at a target site, compared to reference ecosystems, enabling the indicator to assess net-positive or net-negative biodiversity change. The indicator is validated through simulations and applied to North Sea data, demonstrating its sensitivity to species richness and its capacity to track biodiversity changes over time. The BSI was shown to perform accordingly to expectation, showing no preference for a specific metric included in the calculations. Additionally, the BSI showed that while giving a clear and simple number to communicate and relate state of biodiversity and biodiversity changes, resolving the calculations into its constituent components can assist in resolving some of the internal ecosystem dynamics by levering changes in taxonomic, functional and interaction diversity with each other. In conclusion, the Biodiversity State Indicator can be a solid tool to assist in the net-positive strategy of marine stakeholders, developers and decision makers.